(Catching up on some thoughts after getting through a couple of recent client interactions, conferences, and books.) In the portfolio management space, we seem to live on a continuum.

On one side of the continuum, we have this vision of the perfectly optimized portfolio. In this vision, every project has a business case and can be prioritized against every other project – perhaps in the form of an evolving backlog that gets released into execution on a quarterly basis.

On the other side of the continuum, each stakeholder group is allowed to manage its own funding, i.e. the siloed funding approach. Prioritization occurs within the silo, and little if any lip service is paid to how the project for one group should align with the project in another group.

So the question comes up….when does it make sense to segment and when does it make sense to share? What are the hybrid scenarios where it makes sense to have both models? This blog post is my initial attempt to answer that question.

Before we get too far into that discussion, however, let’s take a look at this diagram we came up with recently for an IT PMO. Essentially, we analyzed the work in a “standard” IT department and segmented it out into three proposed portfolios. Note that this schematic probably applies outside of IT as well, i.e. oilfield management, facility management, etc.

Per our analysis, we had three main portfolios. In this case, we use the word portfolio to indicate a specific governance process, i.e. a process to capture the request, approve it, pass it into execution, and then manage the benefits realization – the request to fulfillment value chain.

Portfolio #1: Mandatory – these projects are required due to regulatory reasons. Hence they must be performed. I am still working through the funding model for regulatory projects, but let’s simply assume these projects are approved from the initial definition stage – and then funded either from a shared funding pool, from a specific business unit, or in some sort of cost allocation against each of the relevant BUs. (Note that in our experience, the definition of “mandatory” varies significantly from organization to organization.)

Portfolio #2: Discretionary – these projects are what typically fall into the model of shared prioritization. These are projects that don’t necessarily have to be performed, but do have a valid business case that ties back to the goals of the organization. This is the portfolio I will primarily be focusing on in the next post, i.e. when and how to break this into separate funding streams.

Portfolio #3: Baseline – Baseline work in this sense is defined as the work required to maintain the asset portfolio. In IT, we would define the asset portfolio as a series of capabilities or applications. In energy, we might define an asset portfolio as a series of pipelines, wells and facilities. Essentially, the concept is that for every asset, I will have performance metrics, and a set of projects required for maintenance and enhancements. For an application, I will have a project to build it, enhance it every year, and then upgrade or retire it.

The importance of classifying something within the baseline portfolio is that this portfolio typically plays the part of utility services, i.e. providing shared services to support multiple business units. In this case, we don’t want to have to perform a detailed strategic business case on every project that comes through the pipeline – as typically the projects are too small and too focused on a specific asset to justify spending the time of tying it back to the overall organizational goals. Instead, we rationalize the portfolio, and identify the capabilities that are shared across multiple business units. Then we identify the assets that support the capabilities, prioritize the assets, and defer the project approval process to the asset management teams – what in ITIL parlance would be the Application Owner and Manager.

So that’s the overall framework we are going to start with. The next question (and the next post) is how do we determine when to treat a portfolio as a single entity across the enterprise and when do we decide to break it out and make prioritization (and funding) decisions by the BU?